


Hands Shake

by scribblemyname



Series: Yuletide 2014 [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Art, Backstory, Character Study, Estrangement from Family, First Meeting, Gen, Getting Back on One's Feet, Misses Clause Challenge, Reflection, Yuletide Treat, references to drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2795294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara buys the art gallery with what's left of her parents' money.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands Shake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/gifts).



> Prompt: a character study of Barbara prior to and/or during her struggle with addiction (assuming that the struggle is an ongoing process). I'd love to know what she does and who she is outside of lying around her apartment being depressed
> 
> A/N: There's a throwaway line in the first Barbara/Renee conversation about Barbara owning an art gallery. I ran with it.

She buys the art gallery with what's left of her parents' money, as if it isn't blood money and they didn't give it to her to make their drug-addicted daughter go away.

Barbara walks out of rehab with the restless urge to do something with herself, and she remembers the art that drew her to museum walls when she was out of money she could spend on her next high. Her parents' money was always for the apartment, her schooling—things the account manager would pay for when she submitted the request. It didn't buy her drugs.

She goes back into the museum now, stares at the impressionism and the classic art, lets it sink into her bones and ease something inside her. She needs to earn her own money, and the idea is heady to surround herself in this.

So she buys the gallery with the last of the blood money and calls every artist in the contact book that came with the business.

"We're having a reopening exhibit." Barbara's fingers clench, aching for a joint. "Would you like to submit a piece?"

* * *

She meets Jim at the gallery at the exhibit _she_ put together and arranged, as though she'd been doing it her whole life. It's a progression through (her own) chaos to serenity at the end, the paintings that haunt her dreams and make her fingers stop aching, that block and fill the emptiness in her chest where Renee used to be.

Jim is standing in the middle of the darkest hour, hands in his pockets, staring at war.

She stops beside him just a moment, not for him, but to look at the painting, and he surprises her by turning around and saying, "Do you ever think it's staring into your soul?"

War or the painting, she does not know. She knows the answer.

Barbara looks at him and sees the torment blistering in his eyes. "I do."

He didn't really expect it. He's staring at her in equal surprise because she too sees the art of blood and dying reflecting what is inside of her.

He smiles and holds out his hand to shake. "Jim Gordon."

"I'm Barbara." She smiles back and fills her aching fingers with his.


End file.
